Erik Spoelstra took the blame for a “horrendous mistake” after he called a timeout the Miami Heat didn’t have with just 1.1 seconds left in overtime on Tuesday night. This led to a technical foul and gave the Detroit Pistons a chance to take the lead with a free throw.
Malik Beasley made the free throw, and the Pistons went on to win 123-121 in the first game of the NBA Cup.
“I made just a serious mental error there at the end,” Spoelstra said. “That’s on me. I feel horrible about it.”
The Heat were leading 121-119 after Tyler Herro scored with 1.8 seconds left. But after a timeout, the Pistons executed a perfect inbounds play, with Cade Cunningham throwing a lob pass that Jalen Duren dunked.
Spoelstra quickly stormed onto the court and motioned for a timeout, even though the Heat had none remaining.
“There’s really no excuse for that,” Spoelstra said. “I’m 17 years in. We had talked about it in the huddle, I knew that we didn’t have anything. I just got emotional and reactive on that and I made just a horrendous mistake there at the end. It’s a shame.”
Spoelstra has won two NBA championships and was part of the U.S. team that won Olympic gold this summer. He was also voted the NBA’s best coach in the NBA.com GM Survey, receiving 69% of the vote.
But on Tuesday, he made a mistake that overshadowed a great performance by Herro, who scored 40 points and hit 10 three-pointers.
“You don’t want it to come down to a mental error like that,” Spoelstra said, pausing for a moment. “Yeah, you would have just liked to see this go double overtime. That’s the kind of game it felt like. It deserved to go double OT and not have somebody get in the way of that, and unfortunately even as a veteran coach I got in the way of that.”
